…mostly it's photos of Vankleek Hill.

Picture in picture day

Last week was photo day at St. Gregoire Elementary School (Ecole élémentaire catholique Saint-Gregoire), in Vankleek Hill, where Andrew, my girlfriend’s oldest kid, is now in grade one.

They’ve changed the system a little since I was in grade school. It used to be just a class shot, then a shot of the kid. But now parents can schedule family portraits as well. So my girlfriend and I posed with our son, Victor, and Andrew, and then got one of them together.

Back in my day the photographers all seemed to have a wickedly sardonic outlook on life… either that or they were all taking revenge for their own memories of photo days. Or maybe the problem was just the randomness of it all.

One morning mom wakes us up, dresses us in our best clothes, someone tells us to sit as still as possible and, as the trigger gets pulled, and the flash goes off, we do our best to do just that. Then, two weeks later, a package comes in the mail and we finally get to see how prominent those front teeth really are.

We had the boys dressed up for the family shot, then for their own photo my girlfriend bought T-shirts for them. Andrew’s read “I’m the big brother” and Victor’s read “I’m the little brother”.

I’ve seen the shot of the two of them, and the photographer did a great job.